"Really unusual, expensive things always sell; the mediocre things, not so much,” an Old Masters dealer was overheard saying to a client during Early Access Day at TEFAF Maastricht, the 30-year-old juggernaut of connoisseurship that proudly, and justifiably, bills itself as “7,000 Years of Art History.” The show, which was founded in its current form in 1988 but traces its roots back even further, opens to the general public on Saturday and runs through Sunday, March 18.

Red dots indicating sales popped up like a case of measles across the hundreds of dealer stands that have taken over MECC, an immense 1980s convention center bereft of any redeeming aesthetic qualities. On our morning walk to the center, a fellow journalist compared the building to a geode, especially during TEFAF time: “butt-ugly on the outside but full of treasures on the inside.” It won’t be an eyesore for long, though. BiermanHenket, a Dutch architecture firm, is giving MECC a smart makeover that is expected to be completed in 2020.

Maas Gallery’s 1858 The Arcadian Shepherd, a pen-and-ink drawing by William Blake Richmond.

Ka-ching was the order of the Early Access period, one of two days (the second, on Friday, is Preview Day) that the show is open by invitation to deep-pocketed international collectors and their ilk. Moneyed Americans spotted included Blackstone billionaire Steven Schwartzman and his wife, Christine; and Ronald Lauder, the Neue Galerie founder and cosmetics magnate.

VIP-access splitting is a new TEFAF development that is meant to avoid last year’s single-preview-day crowding, when 12,000 visitors clogged MECC; this time around, only about 5,000 of the anointed would be allowed in each day. Some dealers grumbled at the change, largely because it means being forced to divide real and potential clients into A and B lists. As one antiquaire told me, “It makes for a bit of a minefield.”

Back to ka-ching.Robbig München was putting an opulent Meissen candelabra under wraps as I walked into the stand, the 18th-century gilt-bronze illuminator affixed with exquisite porcelain flowers and winsome red squirrel. A life-size statue of Hercules, carved from white marble during the reign of Hadrian, went almost instantly on reserve at Galerie Chenel. Two haunting ghost vessels by artist Bouke de Vries were being removed for shipping at Adrian Sassoon, followed by a pair of colorful openwork covered jars by ceramist Kate Malone.

A life-size Roman marble status of Hercules at Galerie Chenel.

The wall-spanning prize in Carolle Thibaut-Pomerantz’s booth—Le Souper de Pierrot, a mint-condition wallpaper panel made for the 1855 Paris Exposition Universelle—went on view at 10 a.m. and was off the market within hours. “It was a technical feat of the day, having been wood-block-printed on the largest sheet of paper ever made at the time,” the dealer explained, adding that some people (though not the couple that purchased it) might find the subject matter challenging. The panel, made by Jules Desfossé and Thomas Couture, depicts four seriously inebriated friends, two of whom—namely Couture’s buddies Anselm Feuerbach, a German painter, and Alice Ozy, a notorious demimondaine—have collapsed onto the floor of a deluxe Paris restaurant after a boozy dinner. Small wonder its alternative title is Le Prodigues, or The Prodigals.

A model for a coronation medal at Alberto di Castro.

Dealer Alberto di Castro highlighted engraver Benedetto Pistrucci’s 1821 model for a coronation medal that honors England’s George IV, the white-wax profile affixed to a rondel of etched slate; it was snapped up shortly after TEFAF’s doors opened. The medal’s vain subject, however, loathed the depiction, largely because it showed him as he really was, complete with double chin and thick neck.

Demisch Denant sold a polished bronze 1955 sculpture by César. Dider Aaron’s sales included a glorious polychrome 1850s Eugène Lami watercolor of an Aladdin’s-cave room at the overstuffed Paris home of Baron Alphonse de Rothschild—a prescient purchase, given that Château de Chantilly is planning a 2019 Lami exhibition.

Over at Maas Gallery, a collector intently examined, briefly haggled over, and then swiftly purchased The Arcadian Shepherd, an 1858 pen-and-ink scene of a hunky, apparently slumbering shepherd lounging full-frontal as his flock grazes nearby. “It’s a damned good drawing,” the collector said of the pastoral work, executed by the then-15-year-old British artist William Blake Richmond, “but it’s also bloody sexy.”

That’s the kind of passionate appreciation that every art and antiques dealer dreams of hearing, whether you buy anything or not.

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